Brigitte Taittinger: On the scent of a fresh conquest

Brigitte Taittinger is a famous French businesswoman, but she is also the granddaughter of a famous French champagne maker and the wife of a famous French politician.

She flicks through the notable episodes of her life like the pages in a well-worn collection of short stories.

There's the one about her father, François, who would scrutinise the menu every time he sat down in a French restaurant to see if his company's champagne was the most expensive on the list because he wanted to brand the drink as high-end.

"He would look to see if it was there, Taittinger champagne," says Ms Taittinger, who is the chief executive of the global perfume house Annick Goutal.

"Then he would look at the price and if it was not the highest he would cry and be disappointed."

Then there is the story about her husband, Jean-Pierre Jouyet, who went to parliament and impressed all the female politicians with his new fragrance.

"It's very funny because he uses all my perfume. When he was in parliament all the ministers would smell Jean and ask: 'What perfume did you try today?'"

Ms Taittinger is so happy just to tell stories she almost forgets to mention why she is in Dubai, sitting at the top of Emirates Towers.

Goutal is launching a fragrance in the region called Nuit Étoilée, or Starry Night, which Ms Taittinger says is redolent of pine trees, rivers and the great outdoors.

"I'm sure we can grow the business a lot in this part of the world," she says in a thick French accent. "Why? Because people in this part of the world know and like perfume."

Ms Taittinger sits on a sofa covered in blue satin. Coffee, tea and juices are served in beautiful china cups and a bottle of Nuit Étoilée sits in the middle of the table draped in a blue ribbon to match the sofa.

The French champagne heiress is very businesslike at first, but her stern features soon crack into a welcoming smile as she dives into another story, this one about her first day in the job.

The year was 1991 and her uncle had asked her to take over the running of Goutal, which was mired in big losses.

"My uncle said, 'Brigitte, we have bought a house of perfume, it's difficult to develop this type of company, we are losing a lot of money, are you interested in this challenge?' And I said, 'Why not?'"

But it was a big undertaking.

She had to repair a bitter rift between her uncle, Jean Taittinger, and Annick Goutal, the original creator of the Goutal brand, who had left the company and sold her stake in 1988.

Ms Goutal was a former French model and an accomplished musician. She opened her first boutique perfume store in 1981 on Rue de Bellechasse in Paris after training under the tutelage of Henri Sorsana, a well known perfumer.

However, she and Mr Taittinger had fallen out not long after he took the brand into the Taittinger portfolio by injecting cash and buying 60 per cent of the business.

"It had very quickly become tough between them," says Ms Taittinger, who soon approached Ms Goutal to return to the brand in 1991.

"I said, 'Do you want to work with me? You are again in charge of the creation and you are a free creator. It's not my choice if you choose roses. It's your story and your name.'"

Ms Goutal replied: "I like you Brigitte. I do not like your family, but we are going to work together."

Mr Taittinger, meanwhile, protested: "You are going to make an error, she is going to be very costly. We are going to lose a lot of money through Annick Goutal."

"But I said I think I'm right because she is the creator, because she is wonderful," Ms Taittinger says.

Despite Ms Goutal's disdain for the Taittinger family, she and Brigitte endured six years of difficult trading, and eventually made the company profitable in 1997.

Coming from a line of successful businessmen and politicians, Ms Taittinger was under pressure to make the brand a triumph.

Her grandfather had founded the Taittinger dynasty in 1932 and it grew to include 450 hotels, a successful champagne business, the crystal manufacturer Baccarat and the Goutal perfume house.

"We are the third generation. The company was created by my grandfather. My parents' generation were eight. My generation, we are 24 [people]," says Ms Taittinger. "It's very difficult to structure when you are eventually 60 people."

So after thinking long and hard, the family decided to sell the company in 2005. "We decided to all go or stay. It was a one-year decision to take. It was very difficult," says Ms Taittinger.

The hotels, crystal, champagne and Goutal were sold in 2005 to the hotel group Starwood. Last August, Goutal was individually sold to Amore Pacific, a Korean beauty and skincare company.

"I'm a pragmatic women, depending on the strategy of my shareholder," says Ms Taittinger. "My first conversation with Starwood in 2005 was that I would like to make a proposal to buy the company. They said, 'Brigitte, first of all, we don't want to sell the company, because of the success in the US market and if you agree, can we continue to develop the strategy.'"

Ms Taittinger was convinced by Starwood's proposal because it said it would protect the image of the brand, the boutique nature of the company and the legacy of the creator. "For me, the most important point was to retain independence of creation," says Ms Taittinger. "Life is long. I'm very pragmatic. It was not possible to buy but I agreed with Starwood. My focus is now Middle East and Asia, because now we have Korean shareholders."

Alongside telling interesting stories, pragmatism is another quality Ms Taittinger seems to have in abundance.

As a graduate, she dreamed of a job in journalism, but she instead took a job in advertising and communications. She worked in Paris for four years at Publicis, where her client was L'Oréal.

"I worked with the marketing team at L'Oréal for many years. I was very impressed because they were marketing professionals. When I discovered the world of Annick Goutal I thought it would be difficult to be as professional as L'Oreal. But what can Annick Goutal be? It can be totally different which means the creator is queen," she says.

Sadly, Annick Goutal, the creator and queen, died in 1999 of breast cancer, at 53. Her three sisters also died of cancer at a young age.

"The last five years, Annick, she was very ill. But creation was still a big part of Annick Goutal," says Ms Taittinger.

Fortunately, this final story has a happy ending, because creation has remained in the Goutal family.

Annick's daughter Camille, 34, now works with her mother's long-standing assistant Isabelle Doyen to produce the brand's fragrances.

"I think I was right to ask Annick Goutal back. It's one of the reasons there's a lot of emotion in this brand," says Mr Taittinger.

rjones@thenational.ae

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